


Trouble Magnet

by strikeyourcolors



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Accidents, Big Brother Dick Grayson, Brother Feels, Brotherly Love, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Humor, Jason is a Dork, Minor Injuries, Schadenfreude, Tim Drake is unlucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-10 20:55:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11699745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikeyourcolors/pseuds/strikeyourcolors
Summary: "How do you explain it?" Bruce asked simply. "It's like you've been synchronized into passively hostile acts against Tim. Did he do something? Were you brainwashed? Because I now have a son who has been crushed, had his face broken, and been shot. All incidences of friendly fire."In which Tim Drake is terribly unlucky (even if he refuses to admit bad luck exists) and his brothers may or may not be trying to kill him. That's what families do, right?





	Trouble Magnet

**Author's Note:**

> Life has been busy lately so it's been a little while! Confession. I love Tim Drake and the horrible things that seem to happen to him. This spiraled out of such a love. Tim has his place in the Batfam (and I miss him in Rebirth) it just so happens to be punching bag.

Someone had stolen the coffee maker. Someone was going to die this morning. Tim squinted out the kitchen window to judge the position of the sun in the sky instead of looking at any number of clocks present in the manor. Maybe it was afternoon. Maybe the coffee-thief had been granted an extra half day of life. 

It had been a long night that had bled into dawn before Tim managed to crawl into his bed at Wayne Manor rather than at his converted apartment. Ultimately he'd been too exhausted to stand after that many nights spent rounding up what felt like every criminal in the city. A jailbreak at Blackgate and trouble from the Joker meant all hands on deck and that those hands stayed until the job was done. 

"Master Timothy?" Alfred questioned and Tim realized he had been staring at the empty spot on the counter top where the coffee maker normally sat for at least a full minute without blinking. 

"Coffee," Tim replied and the word was like a whine when it came out of his throat. 

"I'm afraid Master Damian procured the coffee maker during the night without my permission," Alfred told him with a shake of his head. "I only suspect it was him since he then retreated to the basement." The basement. Did they have a basement? No, Tim thought, no the likelihood of Bruce hiding a basement from him for this many years in the off chance his biological child would need to hide from Tim after stealing his precious coffee maker was not good, to say the least. Alfred must mean the cave. 

Alfred brandished a shiny, metal kettle at him. It looked like an old fashioned coffee pot. Tim wondered how he could be so cruel. "I do have this percolator on reserve. If you would be inclined to wait a quarter of an hour then you will have a much stronger cup of coffee." 

Fifteen minutes. That was too long. Way, way too long. "Make it," Tim instructed and knew that he would be apologizing to Alfred later for being so rude. "I'm getting that coffee maker back." Because he wasn't going to need one cup, no matter how strong it was. No. He was going to need at least three. Four if he counted the one he would shove down Damian's throat to scald his vocal cords. 

He stomped into the library, glad muscle memory allowed him to properly trip the entrance to the gave because he certainly was not firing on all brain cells. He went down the steps, settling for a righteous, sweeping rage instead of stealth. He was too exhausted to be stealthy. 

There, sitting on a table in the work area Damian had claimed as his own, was the coffee maker. The red light was on, signaling its need for water and Tim rushed forward, wrapping an arm around it like a mother embracing her child. "Did he hurt you?" He asked the appliance, stroking the back of the overheated water reservoir as he pried the lid off. "What did he do to you?"

"Are you talking to the coffee machine, Drake?" Damian. Damian rounded the corner, wearing the sweat pants and shirt that Tim knew he kept in the cave. He hadn't even had a reason to be upstairs. No reason at all except to steal Tim's precious kitchen appliance. 

"You didn't give it enough water!" Tim snapped. "You know that's bad for it! I bet you didn't even run a de-scaling process when you were done, either." He grabbed an unopened bottle of filtered water, carefully pouring it in and sighing in relief when the coffee maker hummed and began to heat the water. It still worked. But the soothing vibration of it woke Tim up a little more. Enough to realize this puzzle didn't add up. "You don't even drink coffee. Why did you take this?"

Damian looked uncertain. Conflicted. Tim frowned. "I could just review the security footage. If you put poison in it or something..." Tim would drink it anyway, honestly. He would just hope the antidote was readily at hand or that the caffeine-induced wave of brilliance would save his life. 

"I did not put poison in it, Drake," Damian snapped. "I do not even know of a water soluble poison I have on hand that I would use on you." 

"Good to know," Tim replied, looking for a mug. "Why did you need coffee?"

Damian snorted. "I was in need of hot water and this device provided the optimum temperature. I assure you, I have no chemical dependency on coffee as you do."

"Uhuh," Tim agreed, not entirely convinced. "Why did you need hot water?"

Damian shifted from foot to foot. He looked like he needed to pee. Or like he might combust. Tim was versed enough in Damian-language to know that he was having trouble articulating his emotions. He glanced around, hoping Dick would magically appear to translate or coach Damian through his emotional hang up, but Tim had no such luck. Of course not. No day that started without coffee was lucky. 

"Titus was in the field last night." Damian blurted it out and Tim simply stared. He'd know that. "Titus was _injured_ in the field last night," Damian clarified. Tim panicked for a moment, but the dog was on his bed near Damian's chair. His tail wagged a little when he realized Tim was watching him. "Only a scratch but he has abdominal bruising. He needed special food but he did not enjoy it chilled." 

Tim gazed from the dog to his owner and back again. "You didn't put dog food in my coffee maker," Tim stated. 

"Of course not," Damian hissed and Tim almost wanted to hug him in relief that his coffee maker had not been sullied. He settled for rubbing his own cheek with the heel of his hand. There was no mug or coffee pod in sight. "I simply used the water to surround the dish of his food until it was warm." 

Tim wanted to be mad. He couldn't be mad. It was for Titus and honestly Damian's care for his animals was sometimes the only way Tim remembered he was a child and had human emotions at all. "Don't do it again?" He meant for it to be an order. It came out more as a tired request. And then? Then he saw a box of coffee pods on a storage shelf. Perfect. He bolted toward them, assuming the faster he got them the faster coffee would be in his mouth. 

"Drake, don't!" Damian yelled. It was too late. Tim's foot hit something oily and slick and he realized the area around the drain in the floor (used typically for when they got covered in something foul on patrol) was completely coated in the slippery substance. Tim flailed, skidding and waving his arms wildly to try to stay on his feet. He slammed into the storage shelf. 

Which he found out had not been re-bolted to the wall after the last time it collapsed. Because it fell again, straight onto Tim. 

~*~*~

"I wasn't _trying_ to kill him," Damian insisted again. He'd gone on patrol with Dick. Bruce had charge of a somewhat injured Tim, but the concussion and bruises hadn't been much to worry about. Fortunately Damian had managed to lift the shelving unit off of him before he suffocated to death, but it was a near thing. 

Bruce hadn't believed that it was a complete accident until Tim had regained consciousness. Even then, he wasn't convinced it wasn't some clever scheme orchestrated by Damian instead of just his negligence to clean up the residue of the chemical he'd washed off Titus the night before. 

"I believe you, little D," Nightwing replied with a fond ruffle to his hair that made Damian glare and bat at his hands like an overly frustrated kitten. 

"Death by furniture isn't really your style," Red Hood agreed. He had joined them for a quick sweep of his neighborhood, but he'd stayed for the story relating to Tim's brush with fate. "You seem like the type who wants someone to know you did it. Like the guy's on his death bed reaching out in peace for you. And you take his hand and he squeezes your fingers and you smirk. Then, while he's staring at you, you lean in close like you're going to kiss his cheek, right? But instead you whisper that the poison was in his glass, not in the wine. Or you tell him the combination to the safe where he kept his uranium and-"

"Jesus, Jason," Dick said to prevent the fantasy from playing out any further. "That's a little morbid."

"You sound like you've had experience," Damian pointed out. "Would you be interested in discussing your methods with me-ow! Hey!" He turned to glare at Nightwing who had smacked him in the back of the head. 

"Don't encourage this. And besides. Red Robin is...accident prone. You know that." Dick sighed a little. He had even more experience than either of them dealing with Tim's bizarre injuries and bad luck. 

"Yeah," Jason added. "Like that time he fell on my knife."

Dick glared. Damian snickered quietly. "He just has bad luck," Dick protested. "He's capable."

"No such thing as bad luck," Jason replied. 

"An old-fashioned superstition to explain away your in inadequacies and ineptitude," Damian chimed in. "Perhaps he knew my distaste for him and subconsciously believed he would be hurt and so set in motion that he was." 

If that was the case, Dick hoped Tim didn't pick up anything subconsciously from Bruce. 

~*~*~

The bruises and concussion of the shelving unit were forgotten, but not gone, by the time Dick came to the Manor to visit. With Damian cajoled into doing his school work, Dick had decided some quality time with Tim was in order. Of course, it was a nice day and Dick wasn't about to be cooped up inside. 

He was relatively sure Tim was part vampire judging by the amount of sunscreen he put on simply to go play on the tennis court with Dick. They'd long since converted the automatic ball launcher to use larger, softer balls for training purposes. Deflection was a key skill for Robin and, though Dick didn't admit it, he'd spent quite a few hours of his youth trying to deflect those balls with bracers on his arms and pretending he was Wonder Woman. 

Tim moved well. He was, Dick thought, not the most instinctive fighter in the world. Everything was practiced, rehearsed, but Tim tried harder than any of them and it had always endeared him to Dick. The combination of skill and the brain power to know the application of that skill was a bit terrifying. 

"Feeling better?" Dick asked after completing a cartwheel, avoiding each of the balls expertly. "You're looking better." Still pale, but normal Tim pale and less nearly murdered by a shelving unit pale. 

"I didn't feel bad to begin with," Tim replied, grunting as he hiked his leg up as quickly as possible and was narrowly missed by a ball. They would have to work on his flexibility again. "Just tired. And bitter that my coffee maker was used on dog food. It was mine! It was in the kitchen as a courtesy!" He spun, leaped into the air and landed again. "Bruce gave it to me as a graduation present!"

Dick could sympathize. But Dick was also more in the business of stealing things from his brothers than he was in having things stolen. "But you got it back," Dick soothed him. "And now you have a back up." That Bruce bought to keep the peace and Tim kept under lock and key. Alfred refused to let him have it in his room, lest he never emerge again. 

"Still," Tim argued. He paused, cocking his head. The balls had stopped flying. The machine was still active, rumbling as it normally did. It hadn't even been a full two minutes; there was no way it was out of ammunition. "Should it be doing that?"

Dick sighed. "I leave you with all my toys and no one ever takes care of them. I'll fix it." He wandered across the tennis court, examining the ball thrower. It was rattling dangerously. Some kind of intake problem?

Then it exploded. Not literally, fortunately. Apparently it had been more an outtake problem of too many balls trying to come down the tubing. Dick thought maybe the high pressure was part of the problem about the time the machine erupted, spewing balls into the sky.

Well, except for one. The ball had been painted gold and it was one that the Robins once made a game of catching to win. It flew out of the mouth of the machine at an incredible speed. Dick yelled and threw himself into a roundhouse kick on instinct, foot connecting cleanly with the ball and sending it flying away from him. Toward Tim, he realized in a horrifying moment. Tim had moved up beside him instead of behind him. 

There was a sickening noise of bone breaking and then Tim was on the ground. Dick punched the off button on the machine desperately before he ran for his younger brother, kneeling beside him. Tim was stunned, coughing and sputtering on his side, face coated in blood. But he was breathing and that was most important. "Shit," Dick swore. "I'm so sorry, Timmy. I didn't see you. Didn't even think. I just reacted and...wow your nose looks really, really broken." 

Pale blue eyes glared balefully at him. Tim's hand hovered over his face without touching it. "You think?" He spat. He certainly felt like his nose was crushed. He'd also bitten his lip at impact and torn a place on it open with his teeth. 

Alfred was already running from the Manor's kitchen with a first aid kit. Bruce was trailing behind him. "Sorry," Dick repeated. 

Tim snarled and punched him. 

~*~*~

"Seriously, though," Dick lamented a week later. "What are the odds of that happening? Like one in a million, right?" He was trying to pitch his voice low. They were in an abandoned building, successfully cleared out of people, looking for some of the stashes the local band of gun and weapon dealers had left in it. Tim was a floor below them, and Damian a floor below that. Jason was supposed to have the roof but had found nothing interesting and decided searching the top floor with Dick was a better use of his time.

Jason rolled his eyes. One of them alone could have undertaken this mission successfully but he kind of liked it when they worked together like this. It was better than dealing with any of them out of costume and at home. Their home, he firmly told himself, not his.  "You act like you were permanently traumatized by the incident," He said dryly. "I don't think it broke your nose." 

"It broke my feelings!" Dick exclaimed. Goldie, honest to God, had a hand clutched over his heart. Jason snickered. "He wouldn't talk to me for two days and he only started then because I bribed him."

Replacement could play Dick like the best fiddle in the world. Jason definitely respected that, differences aside. He had even felt a little twinge of sympathy seeing the guy with two black eyes from pooling blood because of his broken nose. That must have been hard to hide and excuse in real life. Jason was happy he didn't have to deal with that shit. "What'd you give him?"

"Tickets to the midnight showing of that space movie he wanted to see," Dick admitted. "And some chocolates." 

Jason whistled as he emptied out another dresser drawer of molding linens. It was a miracle the apartment building hadn't collapsed. The walls were paper thin and there were holes in the floor the size of Jason's arm. "You never treated me that nice."

"I never broke your nose with a training ball." Dick was nearly upside down as he rummaged under the sink. Jason thought that was a little high risk for some creepy crawly and possibly bug like thing deciding to skitter up your nose. 

"You broke my arm that time," Jason reminded him. "Then you and B had a screaming match over who was responsible for me. So I guess that was my present from you?"

Dick threw something that had maybe once been a sponge at him. Fortunately, it missed. Jason snorted, grinning as he pulled a poster away from the wall to reveal a hollowed out area. "Look what I found."

Mostly guns. In good shape, if Jason was any judge. Someone had been here recently and they hadn't really secured them all that well. Arrogance or confidence? Either way, Jason thought they were going to suffer tonight when he broke away from the group. 

He pulled out a pistol, examining it for signs of wear and use. "These look new. And counterfeit."

"How do you knock off a gun?" Nightwing questioned. He was snapping a few photographs so they could put things back how they found them and tip off the police, no doubt. Spoil sport. 

"It's an inferior weapon," Jason answered, trying to keep it simplistic. He was also relatively sure this was one of the mandatory Robin lectures. Maybe Dick hadn't paid attention that day. "They usually have something wrong with them. They'll still fire but they could be dangerous. Won't last as long." Nothing that would concern someone familiar with the quirks of weaponry like this but released to a bunch of untrained thugs? It's a recipe for disaster. "Need to look into how they got them in the first place." 

Dick nodded. Probably compiling notes in his brain. Jason, though he would hide it even while being tortured, liked watching Dick work. He liked seeing how different they were. How far they had both wandered from Robin. Bruce might have boys with dark hair and light eyes but all their personalities seemed in conflict. 

Jason lifted the gun up to show it to Dick. Basic gun safety was also encouraged, though Jason threw most of those rules to the wind when he was actually fighting. "The slide is loose on this one. Gives it a hair trigger." He pointed it to the floor then. "There's no wear so it probably hasn't seen much use. But the oil on it and the weight would make me think..." 

The gun went off. Dick jumped. Jason didn't, only frowned at the sound of a thud from the floor beneath them. "It's loaded," He finished awkwardly. 

"Fuck!" Tim's voice, from below them. "Fucking...Hood!"

Jason couldn't find where the bullet had embedded. It had, it seemed, gone through one of those arm-sized holes in the floor and...Jason looked through the hole. Tim was on one knee, hands clasped around the opposite ankle. "Found the bullet," He announced. 

"You shot me!" Tim yelled. He looked completely baffled by what had happened. There wasn't a lot of blood yet so Jason was hoping he had just clipped him. 

"Just a graze," He assured Dick but Dick was already basically flying out of the room and toward the stairs, rushing to check on Tim. Jason had to give him some credit; in a panic he'd kind of expected Dick to try to jam himself through the hole in the floor like a really dumb and fat ferret.

"We found the stash of weapons up here," Jason offered happily to Tim. 

He could see Tim's eyes narrow, despite the mask he wore. "I hate you." 

"You say that to the man holding the faulty gun while you can't get away. How smart is that?" Jason pointed out. This was...not good. He hadn't meant to shoot Tim. And, anyway, he'd aimed far away from any rotted floor boards! That couldn't possibly be his fault. 

"Let me see it," Dick murmured, having reached Tim's side. He pushed Tim to sit down on his butt and gently pried his hand away from the wound. Jason would have been touched by the scene if he didn't feel so vaguely voyeuristic, peering down at them through a floor gap. 

Tim let Dick examine his ankle, only slapping him a couple of times when it got too rough. "It's not bad," Dick reassured Tim. Jason wished Dick thought to say something to him as well. "Though the angle is kind of weird for Hood to have shot you like he did. The bullet is still in there but it's not against bone or anything." 

"Ugh," Tim groaned. "I do not want this bullet taken out of me."

"We could amputate the foot," Jason offered. Both his brothers stared up at him and he was glad only his mask and part of his face was visible. If looks could kill, he would be a dead man. 

"Put that back where you found it," Dick ordered. "Everything back where you found it and get down here." 

Jason scoffed. "Who died and made you Batman?"

They both glared. "B died," Tim replied sullenly. "Several times. And he sure didn't make you Batman any of those times." 

"Burn," Dick intoned. 

Jason flipped them off, but he did as ordered. 

~*~*~

"You shot him," Bruce said. He was almost blank. Eerily calm. The screaming had passed and Dick, Jason, and Damian sat sullenly on the couch in Bruce's office. 

"Accident," Jason replied. "Won't happen again." 

"You broke his nose," Bruce continued, pointing at Dick. 

"The ball broke his nose," Dick countered. "I apologized!"

Bruce sighed and turned to Damian. "And you dropped a shelf on him." 

Damian shook his head. "The shelf _fell_ on him, Father. I had nothing to do with it." 

"Except luring him to his nearly certain doom," Jason muttered. Dick elbowed him sharply. 

Bruce chose to ignore them. Probably one of the best bits of parenting advice he'd ever received was about ignoring certain misbehaviors that weren't worth fighting about. "How do you explain it?" He asked simply. "It's like you've been synchronized into passively hostile acts against Tim. Did he do something? Were you brainwashed? Because I now have a son who has been crushed, had his face broken, and been shot. All incidences of friendly fire." 

The ankle wound hadn't been that bad, but it could have so easily ended up being much worse. Bruce was trying to decide if Tim had been born under a lucky star or a catastrophically unlucky one. 

"He has bad luck," Jason said at last, as though reading his thoughts. "Kid is a trouble magnet." 

"A bullet magnet," Damian said.

Dick reached around Jason to smack Damian in the back of the head again. "He is super unlucky though," Dick agreed. "Like we might need to give him a bath in four-leaf clover juice or tie a rabbit's foot to his staff or something." 

"We can never take him to Vegas," Jason announced sadly. 

Bruce rubbed his temples, looking between the three males sitting on the couch. He had almost hoped they were brainwashed into a kind of veiled hostility against Tim. That would have been easier to explain. "It's busy this time of year. I need Red Robin capable and in the field. Uninjured." He stressed the last word. "If you think the three of you can manage not injuring him further?"

"We didn't intend to injure him in the first place," Damian pointed out. "Therefore it would be impossible for us to promise to not injure him further when we are not in control of the happenstances in the first place." 

Bruce glared. Damian glared back. Dick and Jason shrank away lest they be turned to stone or caught in the worst glare off short of someone having heat vision. 

"Master Bruce!" Alfred's voice suddenly cut into the office through the intercom. "We have a situation in the kitchen, sir. With Master Timothy." 

Jason and Dick exchanged glances. 

~*~*~

Considering how his week had gone, Tim was grateful to be up and moving around. Hobbling, more like, but the ankle had mostly healed in a week. Tim's eyes were less bloodshot and his ribs didn't crackle when he coughed or sneezed. 

Yes, Tim thought. Things were definitely looking up for him. He had plenty of time to catch up on his paperwork from the office and he even solved a couple of cases by doing nothing more than staring at the evidence. He'd had a run of bad luck but things were improving. 

He slipped into the kitchen, glad to find his coffee maker untouched and on the settings he'd left it on. He set it to brew a cup of coffee, sighing happily. The kitchen always had good memories for him. He hadn't spent as much time in it as Jason had, but it was warm and inviting. 

Especially since Alfred was baking muffins. Even more so since Alfred felt bad for him and allowed him to have one before any of the others (where were the other members of the household, anyway?) got to dig in. Tim leaned against the counter, carefully peeling the paper back from his chosen muffin and starting to eat it. Alfred looked expectantly at him. 

"It's good," He announced, mouth only a little bit full. "What is it?"

"Chocolate zucchini," Alfred informed him proudly. "Mixed, of course, with a little protein powder and some vitamins. The good Lord knows none of you eat the way you should for your lifestyle." 

"Sorry," Tim murmured. Thought he murmured. He coughed. The muffin felt like it was getting caught in his throat. He poured water straight from the tap into his coffee cup and downed it, trying to dislodge the caught piece of muffin. His tongue felt weird too. Slimy? Itchy, too. 

"Are you alright, Master Timothy?" Alfred questioned. "Usually it isn't you I have to worry about taking bites too big to chew thoroughly and swallow." 

Tim hit himself on the chest with his fist, clearing his throat again. He took another swallow of water. "Yeah. Swallowed wrong or something." He felt a little light-headed too. But no amount of water was clearing his throat. That was strange. "I think..." 

And then he couldn't breathe. Alfred snatched the muffin out of his hand, tossing it away, and Tim realized his hand had little bumps on it. The old butler hauled him all but bodily to a chair, pushing him down in it and reaching to feel his neck. His fingers prodded into Tim's mouth and Tim made a face. 

"I wasn't aware you had any food allergies," Alfred said with a frown. 

"I don't," Tim answered. "Is is really hot in here?"

"Stay," Alfred instructed and moved over to the little intercom. "Master Bruce. We have a situation in the kitchen, sir." He paused. "With Master Timothy." 

Tim was, not for the first time, glad they lived in a house so well stocked with medical supplies. By the time his throat started closing up, Alfred had jabbed him in the thigh with epinephrine. His male family members had thundered into the kitchen to watch the spectacle, and Tim groaned a little bit. 

"I do apologize, Master Timothy," Alfred said while he panted and waited to be recovered enough to stand. At least Bruce had helped him pull his pants up. "You have never had any food allergies to consider." 

"Adult onset food allergies are rare," Bruce announced. "And even then they usually strike in your thirties." 

Five sets of eyes turned to stare at Tim. "What?" Tim asked. "I'm not some zoo exhibit." He still itched. He scratched idly at the hives on his chest. But he'd take those over his tongue being swollen. 

"You kind of are like a zoo exhibit," Jason replied. "The unluckiest Robin in the world."

"You died," Tim replied and didn't care about the discomfort that brought any of those gathered. "That's pretty unlucky."

Jason just laughed. "But I didn't almost die because of a muffin."

"Screw you," Tim began, but Bruce held up his hands for silence. It actually worked when they hadn't gotten into the thick of a fight. 

"Do you think Alfred is subconsciously trying to kill Tim too, Bruce?" Dick asked and Tim wondered what he had missed that that had been a theory at all. Assuming all of his brothers were sleeper agents bent on killing him and making it look like an accident was a pretty far stretch. 

“Wait,” Tim said. “Who is trying to kill me?”

“The universe,” Jason replied, slinging an arm over his shoulders. “Your fly's still unzipped, by the way.”

Dick simply frowned at him. “I'm thinking we need to search the lawn for four leaf clovers about now.” 

Bruce couldn't even argue. He knew he was next in line to try to kill Tim somehow, and every little bit of luck they got Tim helped prevent that.

**Author's Note:**

> ...I'm sorry I, much like the universe, just can't resist being mean to Tim. 
> 
> Reviews and comments always appreciated! Got a prompt? Want to suggest something? Collab on something? Drop it here or [here](https://strikeyourcolors.tumblr.com/ask) and I'll get to it! I love hearing from all of you.


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